


Ashes

by thedrowningman



Category: Vera (TV)
Genre: Break Up, Dark, Drama, Feelings, Feels, Gen, Hurt, Introspection, Loss, Nostalgia, Past, Sad Ending
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-14
Updated: 2019-08-14
Packaged: 2020-08-31 23:26:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,987
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20248384
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thedrowningman/pseuds/thedrowningman
Summary: with spoilers up to Changing Tides. Because I needed some sort of closure, dammit!partly named for Ben Bartlett's excellent soundtrack: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jK54c2BpDIM





	Ashes

DCI Vera Stanhope unlocked the door of what would always, to her, be her father's house. She bustled past the unpacked suitcase, left neglected in the hallway from the day before, and sat down at the kitchen table to pour herself a drink. A half a bottle of whisky was still there from last night too, covered in grubby fingerprints. It was good stuff. Well, good for the price, which wasn't much. But then, why should it be? It was only going to give her a headache in the morning and earn more disapproving grumbles from her so-called cardiologist.  
  
Vera rubbed her face, and realised that one of the other chairs was turned slightly to face her. She frowned, and tried to work out why it was like that. For a moment, she almost convinced herself there'd been someone in the house. Like a burglar. A burglar! As though any of those scabby teenagers would traipse all the way out here to steal piss-all from her!  
  
Then, of course, she remembered it was Joe's chair. It was his way to sit like that, turned part of the way towards her. He'd left it that way when he'd stood to leave, the last time he was here. Before she'd away to Galway. And come back to find him gone.  
  
She even seen him doze off in that chair once, the stupid bugger. The both of them caught up in some case or another. Joe's elbow planted on the table and cheek smeared across his palm. Bleary. Rubbing his eyes when his phone started ringing. Blindly thumbing the buttons. Celine, asking where exactly Joe thought he was, in that clipped voice that Vera recognised, even from the other side of the table.  
  
"_You'd best go, pet,_" she'd told him.  
  
"_Aye. I had._"  
  
Vera sighed. She poured herself another measure, and put it away with the first. The whisky left a heartburn glow in her throat. It almost threatened to close off her breath. She tightened her grip on the glass.  
  
Had she really called that new boy... Healy was it? Had she really called him by Joe's name? She must have done, 'though she hadn't thought charitably of Healy even before met him, and he hadn't done much to improve her opinion of him since. Arrogant little bastard. Stubborn. Lippy. And he'd messed up badly on that thing with Malcolm Raggert. Not done what she'd asked. Not done his bloody job! Put everything at risk.  
  
She kept telling herself that was unfair. That she had to give him a chance. After all, everybody made mistakes, didn't they? Everyone, that is, except Joe.  
  
Calm, capable, clever old Joe. Joe who'd held her together through that Laura Armstrong case, just after Vera's da died. Who'd steadied her when she'd screamed at him, even though Celine was in labour and he must have been half out of his mind with the worry. With the wanting to be there.  
  
"_Just shut up,_" he'd said when she'd finally asked if he wanted to go. "_Please?_"  
  
Joe who'd kept driving that night. Who'd helped Vera find that missing girl. Joe, who she'd almost thought--  
  
Vera slammed her palm against the table. It didn't matter. Not any more.  
  
But he'd asked her to be godmother to that wee bairn, hadn't he? The one that was born that night. And what had she said to him? Nothing, most likely. So now he was gone, and Vera couldn't even rightly remember if the bairn had been a boy or a girl. All she could think of was something stupid Joe'd said about ravioli...  
  
The phone rang loudly by the kitchen door, and Vera looked up at it, indignant. Only belatedly did she remember that the charger for her mobile was in the suitcase, and the battery was probably flat. So she gathered herself up, and answered the one on the wall.  
  
"Hello? Yes?" And, by habit: "DCI Vera Stanhope?"  
  
"Ma'am." It was Kenny. Of course it was bloody Kenny. "I've been trying to ring your mobile."  
  
"Yes," said Vera, annoyed now. This was wasting her time. And anyway, who was he to make her explain herself like this? "I think it's flat, love. What is it?"  
  
"It's forensics, ma'am. They're saying the form requesting analysis on those fibres from the caravan park haven't been properly signed."  
  
For a moment, Vera was stunned into silence.  
  
"And?" she choked out at last.  
  
"Aaand," said Kenny. "I was... wondering what you wanted to do."  
  
He was uncertain now. As well he bloody well should be.  
  
"What do you _expect_ me to do about it, Kenny?" she demanded. "Hmm? I'm at home. As you should bloody know, given that _you called me there._"  
  
"Sooo..."  
  
"So get _somebody else_ to sign them," she snapped. "Marcus, or DS bloody Healy. And if you can't find somebody between you with a pen, the right authority, and half a bloody brain, then have Healy bring them 'round tomorrow morning and I'll do it my-bloody-self!"  
  
"Right," said Kenny, and hung up.  
  
Vera was certain there wasn't a single useful thought left between the lot of them now, God help her. And God help the poor woman, burned down to embers, whose killer they were meant to be finding. Vera shook her head. She was half way back to the table when the blasted phone rang _again_. If she'd been stronger, she would have ripped it off of the wall.  
  
"Kenny, I swear to God, if this is about another bloody form--"  
  
"It's not, ma'am. It's me."  
  
"Joe?"  
  
The word came out in a sort of strangled choke. Vera slumped back down into her chair, coughed, and poured more whisky.  
  
"Aye," Joe said. "I ca'nnae raise your mobile. Kept going through to voicemail."  
  
"Yes. I... well... " She was vague for a moment, still getting her bearings. Then she was angry. Why was he calling her like this, weeks after everything? "What is it, anyway?"  
  
"Just wanted to make sure you were all right, you know? Since I didn't get to see you at my leaving do and all."  
  
"No," she said. "Well, I was away."  
  
She had made sure of it.  
  
"Aye," Joe said. "Well, I hear they've given you a new detective sergeant."  
  
Picking and pecking, like a nagging mother hen. Just like always. Fussing when she didn't want any fussing. Just 'checking how she was' and 'wanting to make sure she was alright'. Asking questions about Healy.  
  
"Aye," she said. "Well he's..."  
  
"He's what?" Joe prompted.  
  
Vera frowned. Rubbed her forehead.  
  
"Aye well it's not what he is," she said. "It's what he's... no. No. Why are you calling, Joe? What do you want?"  
  
_Just let me have my peace._  
  
"Listen," he said, a bit defensive now. "I just thought I'd--"  
  
"Yes," she cut him off. "Well don't, hmm? Alright, love? You go on and live your little life, and I'll go on living mine."  
  
"Fine," Joe said, his own temper flaring back. But he didn't hang up. She could feel the force of his silence down the line. "You know..."  
  
"What do I know, love?" she demanded. "Hmm? What is it?"  
  
"Nothing," said Joe. "It's nothing."  
  
"Aye," said Vera. "That's what I thought."  
  
She hung up the phone.  
  
_Christ, I sound just like my da._  
  
The breath strained against the stubborn stiffness in her chest. Tendrils of angina clenching around her ribcage.  
  
"Bloody hell!"  
  
Vera fumbled in the kitchen draw for her spray, pumped two puffs of the horrid stuff at the back of her throat, and guided herself down into her chair at the kitchen table. Waiting for the iron band around her chest to ease. Putting the spray back on the table. It was almost empty, and she hadn't yet found the time to pick up the next prescription. Another bloody form she'd have to sign tomorrow.  
  
Vera poured out the last of the whisky and stared at Joe's chair staring back at her.  
  
"Get out of my bloody house!" she yelled at it.  
  
Staggering slightly, Vera seized hold of the chair and marched it out into the garden. With time and stubbornness, she smashed it to pieces, and then dumped those pieces into the split oil drum where she'd burned her father's things.  
  
The wind was blowing in off the moor. A curlew keening out on the tarn and gulls squalling out over the sea. Vera went back inside to fetch paper and kindling, and find the lighter that she kept by the stove.

#

The next morning, when she remembered what she'd done, Vera went out into the yard and poked around in the ashes. Still warm, smoking a little in the first drops of rain that ticked down from a murderous Northumbrian sky. But there was nothing there. Two, maybe three pieces of burned wood, no larger than her finger, and that gave up easily under the toe of her boot.

Well then, there was nothing for it. No one at the station was expecting her in for another couple of hours anyway. Why shouldn't she do what she want?

So she drove down to the river. To the ferry crossing where she'd forced Joe to dump her father's ashes. It had been years back, but the memory of it was seared straight through her. She'd not rightly been able to breathe, clinging onto the steering wheel of the Land Rover as Joe walked down the spillway to the ferry.

By the time she got there today, the murderous sky has split like a corpse, spilling a torrent of silvery rain over everything. Impenetrable. But Vera pulled on her hat and stepped out of the Land Rover all the same. Half-blind, peering through the downpour. Finding her way to the telescope more by feel than by sight. She ran her hand over its chipped white paint.

Nothing to see today. The river barely even visible. Ash grey. Indistinguishable from the rain, from the buildings on the other side, from the sky.

It'd been clearer that day. The sun just rising out of the water, turning tattered, patchy clouds to copper-gold. So Vera had put her quid in the telescope and watched as Joe emptied her da in the Tyne. The same spot they'd put her mum, years before.

Joe'd stood forever at the rail on the back of that ferry, clutching her da's urn as though he could somehow give the old sod some comfort. The daft bugger even crossed himself when he'd done it. Touched his mouth and looked up at the dawn spilling out of the sky. Her da a thin stream of grey dust, melting into the wind above the shining water. Vera's heart knocking in her throat like a loose shutter.

But there was none of that bleak beauty out there today. Just the impenetrable rain that sluiced off of her hat. The ferry, if it was out even there, hidden behind a heavy curtain. All the same, something inside of her seemed to ease.

Vera patted the telescope like an old friend, and turned back towards the Landy. She had her hand on the door when her mobile rang. Not so daft that she'd forgot to charge it a second night, then. Nor quite so deep in her cups, either.

Vera hauled herself up into the Defender and looked down at the screen before she answered.

"Yes?" she said, clipped, already ready to bite the lad's head off. "DS Healy, what do you want?"

The windscreen was streaming with water. Flat grey. Vera listened to the rain hammer on the roof of the car. To the DS Healy's infuriating banter... bloody hell. She was going to have to give this lad another chance. There was no choice. She listened to him talk a little longer, then heaved the door closed and started up the engine.

"Aye," she said. "Well don't panic, love. I'm on me way."


End file.
